If the title of this blog came as a surprise to you, then you should know that true astrology is actually scientific! What is not scientific is the popular, predictions orientated astrology you probably are familiar with!

Friday, 18 October 2013

Scorpio is a mysterious sign, representing certain "oddities" and situations that apparently do not seem to be compatible with life itself. And as we will see here, it bears in its nature a somehow "quantistic" dimension!

To make you realize what I mean, just take a look at the painting above. It is made by a Scorpio painter, the Belgian Rene Magritte. It is a rather bizarre image...It shows a woman riding a horse in a forest. But it is not a "realistic" image, because the woman and the horse are crossing the trees in a rather "quantistic" manner...They themselves are "split" and they are crossing the trees on several planes...

I don't know whether Magritte had studied quantum physics or not, but this painting of his is a very good metaphor for what happens in the microcosm (on the sub-atomic level). The particles there are apparently "splitting" and crossing simultaneously different dimensions and planes...Scorpios - being "tiny" and representing the paradoxical nature and the power of the tiny and invisible things (i.e. of the subatomic, of radioactivity etc.) - are instinctively aware of this quantistic dimension of nature...

So, we might say that the sign of Scorpio represents certain "quantistic" fields of our lives. Take death for example. If you go downtown in the city you live and you walk among the generally careless crowd you will realize that death - although a powerful human phenomenon - seems to be totally absent in such a social context (unless some tragic event has occurred). And yet, just a few meters from where you are walking people might be dying in the private settings of some house, clinic etc.

Sex is another "quantistic" activity associated with Scorpio. When we walk downtown or we find ourselves in some specific social (professional etc.) context then we realize that sex - although omnipotently dominating the human nature - is actually absent there. Every person around us is dressed and behaves "decently", avoiding any acute reference on this subject, which all in all still remains a taboo. And yet most of these seemingly "unscathed" from sex men and women - whom we see standing strict, proud and dignified in the everyday social contexts - they are having sex like frenzied steaming engines, once they find themselves with their usual or casual partner (or partners) in the privacy of an apartment, a hotel etc. This is what I call a "scorpionic quantum paradox" ...

It is not so hard to understand why death is a "quantistic" phenomenon in our lives. Meaning that it exists alright but at the same time "it doesn't exist"! Obviously, this "quantistic" dimension of death is somehow convenient and comforting to us humans. Eschewing death as some procedure that has nothing to do with us right now but constantly postponing it to some fuzzy and remote place and time in the future, certainly out of the reality plane we are living right now, that's an extremely convenient thing to the phenomenon of life! Otherwise, the ominous overwhelming heaviness of death would be constantly crushing us, every single day and moment, not permitting us to live, to feel good, to do things.

Alright so far. But why is sex "quantistic"? Because it actually is our ultimate resort against death! Through sex we become ONE with our partner, we experience the ONENESS of everything, of the entire Universe and we thus overcome the fragile destiny of the mortal individuality we are "entrapped" in! Not to mention that it is through sex that we somehow "multiply" and immortalize ourselves, that we propagate our species. And the undeniable fact is that the "quantistic" dimension of sex, its "social hypocrisy" and "dirtiness" adds a lot of fascination and power to it, it makes sex far more important and special to us!

Just picture what would happen if there was no "quantistic" dimension to sex and various passerby's were freely falling upon you the very moment you were getting our of your house - or walking on the street - in order to have sex with you right on the spot! Wouldn't that be - as soon as the initial "bacchic libertinity" phase would tear off - a nightmare? Wouldn't that weaken sex? And the fact is that we human beings need sex to be unique, "dirty", fascinating and powerful, because ultimately we need a powerful antidote to death!

Wednesday, 17 April 2013

I am a Gemini man living in Athens, Greece. The ruler of my solar sign is Mercury. So, you understand why I love getting out of my house and going on shopping…The task to purchase the daily groceries provides me with the opportunity to justifiably go out of my house, to change environment and experience at first hand what’s going on in the “world”, to walk towards the market and interact with so many and diverse people

The street where I am buying most of my daily groceries - and I am having a cup of coffee too - is called “Hermes”. Actually “Hermes” is the Greek name of Mercury. So, I find it very appropriate that the central street of my neighbourhood, the one with the most intense commercial activity and social interaction is named after the ancient god of commerce and communications. I even conceived the content of this article in between my daily purchases and social interactions in the “Hermes” street…

In this daily itinerary of mine (and yours) to the market place several key functions of the Mercurian archetype are prominently present: getting out of our house, being on the move, experiencing the sights and sounds of our neighbourhood, meeting new things or persons, engaging into a (somehow superficial) conversation with our neighbours or any acquaintances we casually meet in our short itinerary to the market place or in it, exchanging money for goods. There is a lot of Mercury in all these activities, as this is the god of change and mobility, of communications, of reasoning and dialectics, of itineraries, of crossroads, interactions and commerce.

Names say much…Thus, we may deduce a lot of Mercury’s astrological nature just out of its English and Greek name. Mercury has to do i.e. with the element mercury (quicksilver), with a strange metal that is fluid and is ever changing its form. There is even the word "mercurial" in the English language meaning "changeable, volatile, erratic, quick-witted"! And of course Mercury has to do with the word "market" (they both share the Latin radix "merx")! A "market" is a place where many and diverse people gather, where you can trade something, where you can deal in, sell and buy things and services.

The Greek name Hermes might not ring any particular bell to you. It will though if I tell you that the English word “sermon” is related to it! Thus Mercury has to do with a talk that has been properly methodized and structured, a talk containing irrefutable arguments so that it directs the audience to some specific, desirable conclusion. Under this point of view we all give small “sermons” everyday to the people around us so that we convince them for something, so that we achieve something out of them…

You see the Mercurian archetype is highly individualistic. It mostly takes care of our own personal interests. But its individualism has a gentler aspect too, as Mercury is constantly striving to restore some Unity between us and the others, to maintain a contact between us and the Wholeness.....

The Greek language will help us further to understand the astrological properties of Hermes / Mercury. The Greek verb “hermenevo” is tightly related to “Hermes” and it means “to interpret”…The “interpretation” of something, of a sentence, of a situation, behaviour etc. their “deciphering” and rendering in a clear, lucid and comprehensible manner is quintessential to Mercury - and absolutely essential to every human being.

No doubt, that's “all greek” to you…You are suddenly “in the dark” here…You probably look at the above phrase but neither can you read it nor make any sense out of it. You might even feel confused and disorientated about it, urgently needing some "interpretation". Thus, most probably you will open a “Google translate” page and copy - paste the above phrase from Greek to English. You will get then something that goes like this:

"The cognition, mobility, changing the interface are some of the basic properties of Mercury"

This definitely makes some sense to you now. Of course the phrase "changing the interface" is not very clear. The "Mercury in you" is immediately alerting you that there might be something wrong about it. Actually, the google's translation has not been very accurate in this case - it hasn't done a very good "interpretation" of the Greek phrase (I can see this thanks to my own Mercury). What I actually wrote in Greek is:

"Reasoning, mobility, change, interconnections are some of the basic properties of Mercury"

What you just experienced with the Greek phrase you actually experience constantly, everyday, almost at every single moment of your life: you try all the time to decipher things and situations around you (and in you), to figure them out, to make sense out of the innumerable and diverse instances and situations you encounter in your life: from the very moment you wake up in the morning and try to figure out where you are and what time it is, to you walking to the kiosk to buy a newspaper and to chat a little bit with the newspapers man, to the shortcut you take while driving with your car in order to get faster to your destination e.t.c. In all these instances you strongly activate your Mercury, trying to reason what's going on, trying to figure out how can you better adapt in your environment and take advantage of the circumstances around you in order to establish a good interconnection with the things and the persons around you and thus more easily and fully achieve your personal tasks.

Thus, a major Mercurian function is to bring things and situations into consciousness and to “reason” them out. Actually "to reason" is to try to understand a situation or a person, to make judgements upon it based on practical facts and situations you previously experienced. Meaning that a good "reasoner" must be curious and observant, a discerning person collecting and accumulating data and judgements over a wide spectrum of situations and facts. And that entails that s/he should have developed a multitude of virtual "information shelves" in his/her brains where s/he has inserted and catalogized those judgements and conclusions. Furthermore, s/he should be able to readily retrieve and combine - under any circumstances - the proper information, in order to smoothly interconnect with his/her environment and efficiently carry through any possible situation s/he encounters!

But where from do things spring out to our consciousness? Out of our own unconscious! Out of the “underworld”! And Hermes / Mercury has a lot to do with the underworld (and consequently with our unconscious). You see, according to Greek mythology he is the god who escorts the souls of the deceased to the underworld! Thus, we might say that he stands at the very threshold between consciousness and unconscious. He somehow partakes of both. He stands high on the Olympus but he comes often down to earth - visiting regularly the underworld too! This mobility and flexibility of his - and his acute reasoning - is rendering Mercury the most suitable god to bring things into consciousness (out of our vast unconscious) and into the Light, to "decipher" the things (the situations etc.) and make them clear, comprehensible, understandable.

Hermes is an Olympian God but a somehow particular one. He does not have a permanent abode in Olympus (heavens) as the other eleven gods have, nor in the underworld. He is rather constantly on the move. And he actually permeates all the three levels of existence: the heavens, the earthy world and the underworld (as we mentioned before he goes often "down under" as a "psychopompos", as the carrier of the souls). Actually he doesn't enjoy a very high status among the gods of Olympus as he carries the rather undignifying job of being their messenger - meaning that he is the one that most often gets in contact with the mortals. But exactly for this reason Mercury was much worshipped by the plain people. They were feeling that Mercury was better supporting and protecting their personal interests! He was even a trickster god (he stole Apollo's cattle) and he was thus favouring any kind of tricksters, like the merchants (they still trick us alright, at least most of them...).

Mercury is the youngest of the Olympian gods and he has thus to do with youth - and more precisely with adolescence. Adolescence is a transition stage between childhood and adulthood. And Mercury has a lot to do with transitions, crossroads and ambivalence in general.
Mercury is ever seeking to reconnect us to Wholeness, to somehow return us to the state of absolute Union. You see during the first months of our life we innately carry within us this sense of "Union with everything", as we descend and incarnate in our earthy bodies. But we loose this sense later on in our infancy and we then experience a very painful and traumatic sensation of “fragmentation” (which actually is the very first step in the process of us becoming fully conscious and independent individuals). The only "remedy" for a child to restore some sense of Unity with its parents and environment is to develop communication skills. By developing communication skills, by even rudimentary speaking and exchanging information with its parents the child develops a sort of cognitive “tenticles” that somehow interconnect it with the huge world around it and thus elementarily restore his/her lost sense of "Unity with Everything"…

Strange as it might sound, the astronomical hierarchy of our Solar system says a lot about the properties of each planet. Mercury is the first planet in that hierarchical order, barely out of the Sun. It is showered by the torrential "consciousness" energies of our Luminary but crucially it resides just a bit out of the Sun so that it doesn't get totally blinded by it! This fact has a major astrological implication: planet Mercury is able of "peeping" through the blinding "solar curtain", taking thus a glimpse of the rest of the solar system and of the dark, immense space lying beyond it! And while the somehow "autistic" Sun is totally absorbed by its own existence Mercury realizes (thanks to the strong "consciousness" energies he receives from its nearby star) that there is something beyond the Sun, something proportionally powerful and meaningful! Thus, Mercury is trying to reason over this world that lies "beyond the Sun", to understand its nature and to establish connections with it!

This stage, of Mercury becoming aware of the existence of non Solar words actually corresponds to the stage of the child loosing its primordial sense of "Unity with everything". They both are fragmenting and traumatic stages. So, what immediately does Mercury in order to "remedy" the fragmenting experience is to attempt restoring some sense of unity with those "alien" to the solar kingdom words. Mercury stands at the very boundary between these two worlds and it somehow has to bring them together, to interconnect them. And to achieve this he has first to understand the nature of these "newly found" non solar worlds and consequently spot any possible "dialoguing" elements between them and the solar kingdom he serves. That is why properties like "reasoning", "dialectics", "interconnection" are ultimately so important to Mercury! There are mere means to the end of restoring some sense of unification between the partial and the whole, between us and the vast "world out there".

Under this point of view, Mercury seems to be an earlier stage of Venus. Venus is aiming to bring together similar (or complementary) things and to unify them. Mercury on the other hand is striving to achieve some elementary "dialogue" between any kind of disparate elements...

Thursday, 21 February 2013

Since I was a kid I had an intellectual fond for the “bearded guys”. I mean I loved the
1960’s hippies alright but I had a very special kick for the ancient
Greek philosophers. Some great philosophers were living almost next to
my house in Athens. And they were speaking a language very similar to
the one I was speaking. So, from early on in my life I felt a
particular connection to them. My little adolescent “getaways” consisted
of me visiting the ancient “Agora” (forum) under Acropolis - a vast
area full of ruins lying below the majestic Parthenon - day daydreaming
there that I was suddenly meeting on a street turn Socrates and that I
was engaging on a conversation with him…

Back then little did I
know that the Greek philosophers (and mainly Socrates, Plato and
Heraclitus) would come very handy to me later on in my life, when I
started teaching Astrology. You see the major complaint of my astrology
students is that astrology consists of so many diverse and disparate
elements that the student is hardly able to memorize the properties of
each one of them, let alone proceed to a proper synthesis of all those
disparate elements, and thus to an effective natal chart
interpretation! As an eternal “parroting” adversary I am totally
sympathizing with my students. Personally, I have always been a fervent
advocate of the “critical thinking” and even of the “sentimental
approach” to knowledge.

From the “bearded guys” I knew that
true knowledge means inter-relating the disparate elements and unifying
them instead of fragmenting them. But back then - on my late twenties - I
did not know any available method that would help me to unify the so
many and apparently inconsistent astrological elements.

Then
an epiphany occurred to me! I started studying thoroughly the teachings
of the foremost humanistic astrologer Dane Rudhyar. Rudhyar helped me
enormously realize how unifying the astrological knowledge is and how
much is based upon principals that in reality are not just astrological
but universal. And I knew from the aforementioned great philosophers
that those principles are somehow “implanted” in every human being’s
brains! Actually, Socrates and Plato advocated the thesis that we human
beings harbor inside us a primordial “super knowledge” of all things -
although on a somehow fuzzy state. Thus, the only thing we have to do,
in order to get “knowledgeable” on some field is to bring into focus and
make conscious in our brains the respective fuzzy knowledge we already
possess!

That was it! Suddenly I realized that I didn’t have to
“impose” any kind of “knowledge” to my students. I just had to become a
sort of “intellectual midwife” and simply assist them in delivering on
their own the astrological knowledge they already possessed! And that
meant that I had to work with them in a totally opposite way, “from
inside out”. I had to avoid at any cost the “academic teaching” (to
present them stuff that they should uncritically accept and memorize)
and help them “give birth” to those astrological principals they already
possess! And consequently expand and “build” upon those principals,
which the students carry “incorporated” in them. Because whatever is
“unconsciously incorporated” in us carries the potential of becoming
crystal clear to us at some point - if properly “triggered”!

My
firm conviction is that students don’t have to “be taught” astrology,
they don’t need to painstakingly memorize hundreds of properties,
qualities and attributes of signs, planets and symbols! They already
know astrology and the only thing they have to do is simply “recollect”
it!

To read more please visit the IAA website to read the syllabus as well as to register for my new course.

Friday, 25 January 2013

The ancient Greeks had a very strong tendency to «anthropomorphize» everything, from their Gods to the most abstract concepts. No surprise then that they had anthropomorphized the viruses and even the "bad vibrations"!

For instance, when someone was falling seriously ill in ancient Greece people would say: "s/he has been possessed by "Keares"". And with the word "Keares" they did not mean demons. They rather meant micro - organisms or viruses! Surprisingly enough, the Greeks had invented a virus concept two thousand five hundred years ago!

Furthermore, the Greeks had «anthropomorphized» even the vibrations of each elusive moment! According to the ancient Greeks when we experience bad moments it is because some Keares have intruded into the place we stand fouling the air around us! Thus, the current moment becomes unpropitious and adverse and consequently everything goes wrong!

The Keares are not necessarily bad. Good Keares exist as well. We might say that the Keares somehow represent the good or the bad astrological influences of the moment. There is ample testimony of this in certain preserved ancient pots and urns with Keares depicted on them. These depictions elucidate pretty well the nature of the Keares.

The above picture for example shows Hercules about to slain a Kear. This Kear has a grotesque, ugly face and can be taken either as a virus or a "bad vibration", a bad moment. In both cases Hercules eliminates the virus or this negative vibration.

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About me

I am perennially in love with Astrology!. I Socratically believe in the Human Being, I believe that
"Good" always thrive at the end (although it might take an awful lot of
time)! I love sensitive people, reading, philosophizing, listening to some dreamy music, travelling.